UAW chief makes populist proclamation
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009Ron Gettelfinger, whose union has single-handedly destroyed the US auto sector, makes an impassioned plea for … money? I don’t know, really.
Well, the closing para was pretty good:
If industry stakeholders will continue to work together, we can set the stage for a renewal of U.S. manufacturing, including a revived domestic auto industry.
I suppose the farm lobby will next lobby for a return to the agrarian society, putting us all to work in the fields.
Really, what the car companies should have pushed (in my opinion) is this: a transformation to a knowledge-based company. Manufacturing would take place in developing/emerging markets, primarily, while many high-pay jobs remain in the US as designers and other professions. Economically, that makes a helluva lot more sense for a variety of reasons.
Lastly, I wonder how many people (domestically) are employed in the car industry. Millions, looking at the entire supply chain, I suspect. The idea that it’s better to have more people rather than fewer produce identical output is absurd. I realize no one is explicitly making that argument (if they knew to make the argument, they’d understand the absurdity), but that certainly seems to be the implication.
In other words, real standard of living rises when productivity rises. Fewer people producing the same or greater output is for the aggregate good of the economy. “Saving jobs” is often the complete antithesis of that, meaning that efforts to “save jobs” can actually cause a reduction in the real standard of living.
Not that Gettelfinger, or our political leaders, care about such things, of course.